MOSAIC - The training kit for Euro-Mediterranean youth work

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participation in the Mediterranean, have been important outcomes of this process.
The production of training and education materials has been another field of activity
for the Partnership. This T-Kit on Euro-Mediterranean youth work is a product of that
partnership and aims to bring together educational experiences and methods used in
youth projects. This is complemented by activities in youth policy co-operation that
bring together national youth policy institutions, youth researchers and youth workers
to exchange approaches and projects on youth policy development, monitoring
and evaluation.
1.8 Where does youth policy stand?
Conditions and challenges related to the welfare of young people are not independent
of local, regional, national and international socio-economic and political conditions.
In national politics, most of the time at policy level, youth issues are neglected, reduced
to or involved in different contexts such as sports or formal education. However, one
of the tools for ensuring young people’s well-being, in order to provide them with
adequate learning, ensure their inclusion and empower them to participate, is youth
policy. 107
A national youth policy presents “the philosophy, vision, formula, framework, priorities,
areas and approaches … that are agreed upon through consultation with
all stakeholders in youth development”. 108 It determines “the place and role of
youth in society, as well as the responsibility of society and public institutions towards
youth”. 109 Accordingly, the purpose of youth policy is “to create conditions
for learning, opportunity and experience which ensure and enable young people
to develop the knowledge, skills and competences to be actors of democracy and
to integrate into society, in particular playing active part in both civil society and
the labour market”. 110 Thus, youth policy is a joint effort by society and political
actors, for and with young people.
Approaches to young people in different national or political contexts play a role in
the making of national youth policies. Apart from differences in the definition of
youth, two opposing but interlocking images of youth are seen to have a decisive
impact on the aims of national youth policies, especially in Europe: the images of
“youth as a resource” and of “youth as a problem”. 111 In the first image, young people
represent the idealised future; they are “a receptacle of the values that each generation
transmits to the next and, therefore, a societal resource which must be given the best
opportunities for development”. According to the second image, young people are
perceived as a problem, “as a source of danger or a period of vulnerability in response
to which protective measures must be devised”. According to the same study, historically
the image of “youth as a resource” prevails in periods of stability, economic growth
and social reforms, while the image of “youth as a problem” prevails in periods of
economic and political instability. These images of youth can be found in historical
and current youth policies of individual countries, but the emphases and priorities
given to them change over time and vary from country to country. 112
Youth policy, as a policy, is not merely the sum of actions taken by the different sectors
towards young people but rather “a conscious and structured cross-sectoral policy of
Themes